How the Jeff Bezos SpaceX rival could trigger a war in orbit

In the late 20th century, we entered Marshall McLuhan’s global village, in which instant communications collapsed distances and weakened the boundaries of the nation-state. We are now entering its next chapter, a lifting of the internet’s physical backbone above terrestrial soil. Blue Origin’s TeraWave project is a manifestation of what Manuel Castells called the “space of flows”: a domain in which social practices occur in real time, indifferent to geographic contiguity. By moving critical infrastructure into orbit, we are creating a planetary nervous system that transcends the old constraints of territory.

An attack on a private communication satellite could constitute an act of war.

What does it mean when that network is physically located in the global commons of space, beyond the reach of any nation’s laws? Communications that once passed through national gateways now beam directly from overhead, challenging the ability of governments to control information flows within their own borders.

Geopolitical lifelines — and severance

Control over communications infrastructure is a strategic advantage. On the very first day of World War I, British forces cut the undersea telegraph cables linking Germany to the outside world, save one cable, which they tapped. This cable-cutting gambit isolated an empire and yielded intelligence coups, such as the Zimmermann telegram, that influenced the course of the war. Networks are a geopolitical lifeline, and to control them or deny them to an adversary is an exercise of power.

The Cold War moved this struggle into the skies. In 1964, the United States led the formation of Intelsat to project soft power through global television and telephone links. The Soviet Union, wary of an American-dominated system, responded in 1971 with Intersputnik. Even as these satellites orbited above Earth’s politics, they were enmeshed in them.

Technology is now catching up to the strategic ambition. While early attempts in the 1990s, such as Motorola’s Iridium, struggled economically, the 2020s brought a drop in launch costs that made massive constellations feasible. SpaceX’s Starlink proved the concept, deploying thousands of satellites to become the world’s largest operator by 2025.

Weaving the orbital fiber

TeraWave is Blue Origin’s bid for the terabit-scale backbone. The system is not designed for the mass-market consumer but is instead a “provider for providers,” an infrastructure as a service for telecom companies, large enterprises, and governments. The technical blueprint calls for a multilayered architecture of satellites: 5,280 in low Earth orbit to interface with ground users and 128 larger satellites in medium Earth orbit acting as high-capacity relay nodes.

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Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

TeraWave and Starlink serve different purposes. Starlink is an access network, a wireless ISP from space. TeraWave is “orbital fiber,” a point-to-point, symmetric link for the heavy-duty data needs of data centers and military command posts. Each customer link can access up to 144 Gbps, while the MEO layer provides trunk connections of up to six terabits per second.

To achieve this bandwidth, TeraWave pushes into the Q and V radio frequency bands, which allow high throughput but require precise, power-hungry ground antennas and remain susceptible to atmospheric attenuation. It also employs optical inter-satellite links to create a laser-based network. Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has opted for a methodical engineering approach that separates backhaul from access, perhaps learning from the single-stack complexities of SpaceX’s pioneering forays.

The ultimate high ground

In space, private innovation meets the hard edge of national security. We saw this in Ukraine, for which Starlink became a digital lifeline after terrestrial networks were disrupted by the Russian invasion. Ukrainian troops used Starlink to coordinate defense and control drones, nullifying attempts to sever their communications. When Elon Musk reportedly curtailed coverage near a conflict zone, citing fears of escalation, the U.S. Department of Defense found itself negotiating contracts to ensure service continuity.

China has announced its own GuoWang mega-constellation of 12,000 satellites to ensure that it is not dependent on Western systems. The European Union has approved its IRIS² initiative to achieve European strategic autonomy and avoid reliance on non-European players. India now requires satellite operators to route data through local ground gateways to protect national security and comply with data localization laws. The transnational nature of these networks is in constant tension with the territorial jurisdiction of states.

Vulnerable in the void

The orbital backbone has a certain resilience, providing route diversity: the ability to act as backup if undersea cables are cut, a real concern given recent incidents of sabotage in Northern Europe and Asia. TeraWave is explicitly marketed as a way to keep critical services online during disasters or outages. For smaller states or enterprises, these networks reduce exposure to local infrastructure attacks.

The stakes in space are high. If conflict extends to orbit, a cascading debris field could indiscriminately knock out the satellites. As militaries integrate TeraWave into their operations, these satellites may become targets, blurring the lines between civilian and military assets. An attack on a private communication satellite could constitute an act of war.

Benefit or Babel?

Low Earth orbit is largely ungoverned. International frameworks lag behind the current technical reality. There is no binding treaty on how many satellites one company can deploy. The lines of accountability are blurred. If a nation’s internet is provided by a private corporation’s satellites, is that nation’s infrastructure still its own?

Blue Origin’s slogan for TeraWave is “For the Benefit of Earth.” It’s a noble sentiment, but achieving it will require more than engineering. It will require wisdom that matches the scale of the technology. We are wrapping the Earth in a collective nervous system; whether this yields a harmonious village or a Tower of Babel is yet to be determined.